Contractor gets stuck in elevator

Roy Tygart was having second thoughts about even getting out of bed Thursday morning after the way his afternoon was going.

John Hacker

Roy Tygart was having second thoughts about even getting out of bed Thursday morning after the way his afternoon was going.

The private contractor from Carthage was working to clean the old McCune-Brooks hospital building and was vacuuming the rear service elevator when his foot, which was holding the door open, slipped.

"I was having to stretch out with the vacuum to reach the back of the elevator," a chagrined Tygart said. "The next thing I know, the door is closed and it won't open. This is embarrassing."

Fortunately Tygart had his cellular telephone with him and he dialed the only number he could think of for his dilemma - 911.

The Carthage Fire Department was called, and while firefighters were trying to get the second floor door open, the elevator restarted and dropped Tygart gently to the first floor and opened.

Tygart was hired to clean the old building at Centennial and Hazel after the hospital's move to the outer road on the south end of town in January.

Hospital staffers, moving the last of the equipment that was going to be moved, left a pretty big mess of papers and dust, so Tygart and a friend were hired to vacuum and clean the building prior to its transfer to Missouri Southern State University in the near future.

Tygart said he trained to be a "tunnel rat" with the U.S. Marine Corps back in the 1970s, so the small size of the elevator wasn't a problem.

Tunnel rats were specially trained soldiers who crawled into tiny tunnels dug by the Vietnamese soldiers to hide from American soldiers in the Vietnam war.

"I went into a recon battalion and since I was small, that's what they decided I needed to do," Tygart said. "Compared to those tunnels, this elevator wasn't a problem."

Firefighters had to cut the wire to his vacuum since the wire was hung up on the second floor, but otherwise, no harm was done, other than to Tygart's pride.

"Earlier in the day I accidentally made a call to the elevator people when I knocked the phone in the elevator off the hook," he said sheepishly. "Something told me I should have stayed in bed this morning."